What Games Are: Game Design, Development, Publishing, Marketing and Art

The Four Lenses of Game Making

For years it’s been apparent that interpreting games and their makers through the opposed lenses of gameplay or story is inadequate. Such a one-dimensional spectrum breeds false oppositions (fun-or-art?) while either ignoring many games that don’t fit or reinterpreting them so they fit badly. The spectrum is too reductive and, while it is easy to summarise, it leaves out too much context.

Rather than talking about games in terms of two lenses, I use four (potentially five, but I’ll come back to that). Each represents a common set of assumptions and predispositions that I often see in makers, and there are correlations between them which makes for an interesting (though perhaps deceptively symmetric) diagram.

This post is long, but I’d like to take you through each in turn. I think you’ll find it useful.

Why Not Brandification Instead? [Gamification]

My sense is that brand managers are approaching games in the wrong way. A few years ago they were all into creating virtual worlds but that didn’t really work out. More recently they went through a phase of creating social games, but again no luck. Now they’re keen to commission digital agencies or game developers to create gamified sites or software for brands, which will inevitably become coupon schemes, badges and leader boards.

The vast majority of these projects are utter failures because they end up creating vapid digital services with no soul. The ones that do succeed often do so accidentally (for example, because they were unexpectedly fun). Games are a cultural product, and like any other culture there is a line where commercial relationships become nakedly self-serving, and no customer finds that sexy.

Perhaps the branding industry should consider branding games rather than gamifying brands instead, if only for the reason that it’s more likely to work.

The Next Wave: Local Games?

Your MMO guild members may be good friends but they’re scattered all across the world. Your mobile games steal your attention away from talking to people. Your social game hassles you to bug your friends for gifts, but otherwise you play alone. Your co-op sessions of Portal 2 tend to be played with mute strangers.

Most innovations in digital gaming tend to produce solitary experiences. This is fine most of the the time, but players don’t always want to be solitary. They like to gather to play, to participate and hang out. Social contact is healthy, and games have always had an important role in helping to bind communities together.

Video games have not really tapped into that spirit yet, but it feels to me like that’s the next wave. Local games are coming.

The Enclosure Problem [Gamification]

Aside from an ugly name, thinness of gameplay, sameness of ideas (rewards, levels, badges and points) and a lack of any strong examples of what it is supposed to be, what’s the most fundamental issue that gamification faces?

The basic idea of gamification is that a game can become integrated in life. Gamification proposes to embellish the real world with a layer of game-like things to do and earn, and in so doing enhance lives. So in a sense, gamification’s big idea is to regard life as some sort of infinite game.

The problem? Games are no fun unless they are finite.

Little Wins [Game Design]

I write this having just missed the express bus at Heathrow Airport.

One of the things that fascinates me about my life is that I seem to respond to little wins. Catching that bus, finding there was more in my bank balance that I'd expected, navigating elegantly through the Underground and sundry other achievements make me feel good.

Gamification: Avoiding The Fate of ARGs [Meta-games]

Supposedly, there's much that can be done with gamification to build deep engagement with users. Games can enhance lives. Everything can become a game, from work to social causes, education and art.

Sure, but actually these ideas are not new. From virtual worlds and alternate reality games (ARGs) to World of Darkness live action roleplaying (LARP) and Killer, the idea of melding persistent play and real life is one that has taken on many forms for as long as the games industry has existed.

As a general grouping I would call them meta-games. They are a lot of fun to create and run as a designer (In fact I got my start in game-making through LARPs), and they have the quality of seeming to change the player’s world. But they also have a critical failing.

Meta-games don’t scale.

 

Distractions [Engagement Hierarchy]

 
At the bottom of the pile in the Engagement Hierarchy is the distraction. Distractions are amusing 1-minute long forgettable game activities that players can engage in, and which are enticing only in a general fashion. A distraction might fly around Twitter as a quick laugh, or be shared on Facebook. It might even have a social dimension equivalent to a shared gag. They are fun, but inherently limited life-span activities, and designing great distractions is a very particular skill.

Distractions have several unique qualities: